Pinterest responds to copyright concerns, updates terms of service

Pinterest appears to be taking feedback from users seriously and has updated its terms of service amid questions about copyright infringements, scams and other content-related bumps in the road along its meteoric rise in popularity.

Pinterest appears to be taking feedback from users seriously and has updated its terms of service amid questions about copyright infringements, scams and other content-related bumps in the road along its meteoric rise in popularity.

A blog post the company published Friday discusses the update. The changes appear to be welcomed by users - co-founder Ben Silbermann's post has generated thousands of up votes and nearly 500 comments, many of them positive.

Among other things, Pinterest says it never intended to sell user content and has removed from its terms of service wording that granted the company the right to do so.

Last month, the company came under fire from bloggers who took issue with the way the site embedded code in user content to generate revenue by appending link tracking codes for e-commerce sites with which it had business relationships.

Silbermann also says Pinterest is making it easier for people to notify the site about copyright or trademark infringements. At Pinterest's Copyright Infringement Notification page, users can provide URLs to where their original work is located as well as URLs that point to where that content is used improperly on Pinterest.

"If you receive a notification that a Pin has been removed due a copyright complaint, it means that the Pin's content has been deleted from Pinterest at the request of the content's owner. If your account receives too many copyright complaints, you may lose the ability to Pin new content on Pinterest, and your account may be disabled completely," states Pinterest's Copyright & Trademark page.

Few Internet sensations can rival the viral success of Pinterest, which in recent months has catapulted to be the 59th most popular website in the world and the 16th most popular in the US, according to web traffic tracking company Alexa. That quick rise could suggest the issues it has faced are due to growing pains.

To its credit, Pinterest is making changes.

According to Alexa, Pinterest is particularly popular with young, educated white women who have incomes over $30,000 (roughly £18,000).